Natural Science 
A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress 
AvucusT 1899 



roLes AND COMMENT’: 
Against the Tide. 
A CRANK has been defined as a man whose position is so different 
from our own that we utterly fail to understand it. But this definition 
is too charitable; it ignores the public aspect of the crank, who not 
only occupies an unintelligible position, but bores you by insisting upon 
it. The crank is essentially a house-top man, not one in a. corner. 
Yet we would not call any one a crank, for by the definition this would 
proclaim our own lack of understanding. We would only say that 
there are some whom some would call cranks, and we have just received 
a paper from one,—a paper entitled “ Fausseté de Vidée évolutionniste 
appliquée au systeme planétaire ou aux espéces organiques” (Lyon, 
1899, 7 pp). The author, Mr. F. Leport, has previously tried to con- 
vince geologists that there are no faults around Morvan, to convince 
astronomers that the nebular hypothesis is gratuitous, and to convince 
others about other things, and now he tries to convince us of the false- 
ness of the evolution-idea. What he has convinced us of is, of course, that 
he does not understand it at all. He opposes it to the idea of creation, 
which no sensible man ever does, for to do so is to quarrel about 
punctuation. He finds that the law of existence is undulatory move- 
ment, and that the origin of the movement is divine—a platitudinarian 
belief which affects the evolutionist not one whit. He tells us about 
the homogeneity of protoplasm and the infertility of hybrids (surely we 
might have been spared that), and so with other matters, when he gets 
near facts he shows by mishandling them that he does not realise their 
solemnity. He tells us that a thesis of St. George Mivart’s entitled 
“ Evolutionisme restreint aux corps organiques ” was examined at Rome 
by competent authority and judged “insoutenable” so far as it dealt 
with the body of man, and his lament is that the verdict was so limited 
in its disapprobation—“ signe terrible des temps troublés ot nous 
vivons.” We would borrow from the Roman authority the word “ in- 
soutenable,” and fix it to Mr. Leport’s mistaken attempt to talk wisely 
about matters which he shows no evidence of understanding. 


6—wNAT. sC.—VOL. xv. No. 90. 81 
